Abstract. On 18 January 2007, windstorm Kyrill battered Europe with hurricane-force
winds killing 47 people and causing 10 billion US$ in damage. Kyrill
poses several questions: is Kyrill an isolated or exceptional case? Have
there been events costing as much in the past? This paper attempts to put
Kyrill into an historical context by examining large historical windstorm
event losses in Europe for the period 1970–2008 across 29 European
countries. It asks the question what economic losses would these historical
events cause if they were to recur under 2008 societal conditions? Loss data
were sourced from reinsurance firms and augmented with historical reports,
peer-reviewed articles and other ancillary sources. Following the same
conceptual approach outlined in previous studies, the data were then adjusted
for changes in population, wealth, and inflation at the country level and for
inter-country price differences using purchasing power parity. The analyses
reveal no trend in the normalised windstorm losses and confirm increasing
disaster losses are driven by societal factors and increasing exposure.